photo of stacks (lower floor)

How Hollywood Works:
Inside the Norman Jewison Special Collection


Requesting & Consulting the Materials from the Norman Jewison Collection

Reading a Finding Aid

A finding aid is:

  • a written, descriptive tool containing information about materials (also known as records or holdings) in a special or an archival collection
  • created by librarians and archivists to establish administrative, physical, or intellectual control over the holdings of a collection, and to make it possible for researchers to retrieve particular records or information from these archives.

A typical finding aid for a special collection lists or describes all of the records, created by an entity (an individual or an institution), in a hierarchical arrangement.

A fonds is the archival term for all of the records in a collection—the sum of all the records created or accumulated by the entity.

Most of our finding aids consist of an introduction, a list of series, and sometimes a comprehensive box/file list for all the records.

An accession number (for instance, 2008.06) means a body of material from the same donor added to the existing collection at the same time.

A series is a group of similar records that are related as the result of being created, received, or used in the same activity.

A box (for instance, Box 1) represents part of the physical arrangement.

A file (for instance, File 1) is a group of documents related by use or topic, typically housed in a file folder.

Requesting the Materials

Consult the finding aid in order to obtain the following details for retrieval:

  • accession number (if present)
  • series number and series title
  • box number, file number, file title and date associated with the file (if present)

Sample Request

For instance, if you would like to see the digital video disc of “ET Canada” interview from Series 1 in the Norman Jewison collection, please note the following details when submitting your request:

  • Accession 2008.06
  • Series 1: Films directed by Norman Jewison
  • Box 1, File 1: Digital video disc of “ET Canada” interview, 2007.

Please consult How to Read a Box/File List to Request Specific Files (PDF) for further instructions.

Requests must be itemized in priority order, according to the order in which you would like to view them.

created by: Agatha Barc & Colin Deinhardt | updated: 7 May 2019